Jedi Mind Tricks

"These are not the droids you are looking for"

One of my favourite things is getting people to do what I need them to do. I like to call it my study of Jedi mind tricks but it's really just psychology. Here are a few tips to get you started:

Don't give people the option you don't want them to choose. If someone asked you "do you want a to go out or stay in" you will reply with one of the options you were given. It would be socially awkward to say "no" to that type of question. What two options are acceptable to you?
Then ask a question that only provides those two options.

Don't - "Do you want to have a drink this week?"
Do - "Let's get a drink this week, does Thursday or Friday work better for you?"


Give people ownership and make them your personal champion. Whenever I call customer service and I have a request I always open with something like this;

"Hi NAME, My name is _________, and I'm having some serious troubles, I need a hero to help fix all of this, do you think you might be that hero?"

Throughout the call, I talk them up, I thank them, tell them they've been such a help, it totally strokes their ego and generally solves your problems. People like to feel like heroes and this way gives them ownership. You can use this similar task with store clerks, police, etc.

Don't - "I know you mark these TVs way up, can you give me a better price?"
Do - "My wife/gf/dog said not to spend this much on a tv, she's going to kill me taking home a tv this expensive that was full price..."


Hijacking the Train of thought. I love this one.
Here's the situation: someone is in a emotional state and has their mind made up. They could be crying because something is going to happen, they could be mad because you did or didn't do something. Regardless these are the situations that you can't talk any sense or reason into them and it's probably going to work out negatively for you.

Here's what you do:
Ask them a completely off topic question. "If you could have any sports car what would it be?" "Do you think my feet are too small for my body?" "Can I ask you where is a great place to grab a coffee around here?" and then from there listen to the answer and follow up immediately with talking about what you want to talk about. You will have completely hijacked their train of thought they won't even be able to remember what they were talking about.

For example:

A girl I was seeing was crying, she often would get stressed to the point that she'd cry over relatively trivial things. In the midst of her tear fest I asked
"when do you think we'll see your nieces next? I really miss those girls."
She fumbled, trying to hold on to her thoughts and I just reasked the question. She replied and then I continued talking and moved the topic to something that didn't involve her irrationally crying.
A few hours later she says to me "was I crying earlier?"
"yup"
"what was I crying about?"
"I forget"
"yeah, it's strange, I do too".



Smile, be confident, expect no other outcome than the one you want. This really shines through. No one ever tries to fuck around with a nice, confident person, it's the people that act like jackasses that get treated like one. People are great at picking up on social cues and they don't want to step out of line. Finally, act like what you are doing is perfectly normal and no one will notice or even question what you are doing. If approached act like you understood that what you were doing was more than ok.


don't believe in jedi mind tricks?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RsgkYLkWlrE

Hands on the Wheels, Eyes on the Road.

You are in control of your emotions, your fears, your life.

It is your choice to decide to overcome that fear, to be happy, to be sad, to be doing something or nothing with your life.

Do something today that scares you, do something that challenges you, cause if you don't you are going to die the same person you are today, just much, much older.




Check out Project Hitch Hiker for my guest post on Jedi Mind Tricks. As well Liam over at This Year of Change has started shirts off Mondays, check out his posts to see him call someone out as well as taking his shirt off.

What are you living for?

Tonight I watched the new Joshua Jackson movie "One Week" I'll save myself sometime and post the trailer to give you an idea of theme of the film:



The movie is exceptional, even more so if you are Canadian, you have ever owned a motorcycle, feel that the brand of your appliances doesn't matter. For me these three things ring true. If you feel like I and project hitchhiker do you don't really need to see this movie or read this post, it'll only reinforce how you feel.

That being said, I know I often fall back in to the rut of life that can suck you in and see yourself repeating your life day in day out months, years and decades. This movie makes me ask:

What are you living for?
Are you living each day only so you can have the next?
What is holding you back from doing something awesome?
What are you going to do that's awesome?
What is your next adventure?
What can you do to enrich your life, your experience?

Why aren't you doing it? please, post up your reasons for not acting in the comments.

Why do these kind of things always happen to me?

Yesterday was a day.

I spent my morning consulting for a client and then promptly switched gears to work on a major campaign I was asked to coordinate. This campaign was to be a huge opportunity and if pulled off would have resulted in major recognition and an increase in future contracts. Until yesterday I had put in 40+ hours so far with another 30 to wrap it up. I had consulted with others in my industry, spent hours researching as well as coordinating and hiring people to work under me to complete the task. Everything would have built up to today with the bulk of the work happening today, tomorrow and Friday. Not only had I been working on the campaign but I had been videoing the entire process to use as a promotional video to show what myself and my team are capable of. Since I'm a bit of a control freak I had been shooting the entire thing "Survivor Man" style increasing the amount of work for myself on top of everything else.

On my way home from work my phone rings. It's the Hospital informing me that there was a cancellation for the following day and they were able to bump me to the top of the waiting list to have a required surgery that has been troubling me since Summer of 08. The issue? I would have to abandon the campaign completely, let go of all of the hired people and cancel the contract, all of this a few days before it was to be completed. What were my options? Not take the surgery and let the problem continue to worsen and affect my quality of life until another opportunity knocked? Take it and cancel my life for a month as I recovered? Lose the month of march? or possibly lose a summer or fall month when my industry is at it's busiest?

I had to take it. Fuck, balls, pissed!

I started making phone calls so I could start fires and then try to put them out. Oh what a shitty day. Yay for burning bridges.

Continuing my drive home I stopped to pick up some books to get me through the 2 weeks of bed rest I would be forced to endure. Distracted thinking about all of the things I had to complete in the next 24 hours I locked my keys in the car. I'm 20km from a second set, my keys are sitting on the seat next to thousands of dollars of equipment, laptop, etc. I can't just leave it there, it's a thieves dream, car full of goodies and the keys on the seat. I call my girlfriend, she can't get a hold of anyone she knows to borrow their car. Most of my friends are at work until 5 and I have a meeting in an hour and no way to get a hold of the people I'm meeting. I'm screwed.

I slink into Starbucks to have a coffee and think about my situation and the large dump that life has decided to take on me today. I start calling people. I finally reach Jon, he's free until 4pm and can come get me asap.

I return home, tired and frustrated. My phone rings, it's an out of province number, ugh, must be more bad news.

Wait, it's a client, they want to hire me, they ask for a quote there and then. I give them my rate (this is the point that most say it's out of their price range) They don't even hesitate, they hire me on the spot. This is great news, the initial payment will pay off my loans and I'm scott free from debt. Then my brain interupts. Turns out that this job will conflict with another job I agreed to well over a year ago, I have to bow out. BALLS! More crapping of life on yours truly.

So what kind of things happened to me today that always happen to me?

Well I got to go for a nice drive to do some consulting, listening to the new In-Flight Safety album, I can use the time already invested in this project to help improve for future projects, I learned many valuable lessons that I would have otherwise not if I had not signed on for this project.

The free medical care that we get in our country called me and said they had cleared a spot to relieve me from further pain and discomfort. I was able to contact my friends and family and have them offer their support for my recovery.

I called a client that was really happy to have me on their project and inform them of the situation, they were disappointed but looked forward to working with me.

I was lucky enough to have a car to lock my keys in which allowed me to sit down and enjoy a coffee reading the newspaper while a good friend dropped everything to offer me his help.

I got a call from across the country from a client that I've never met who was willing to pay whatever they had to so they could procure my services.

I honestly, laughed my way though the entire day yesterday. Sure I was disappointed but I didn't dwell on it. I know a lot of people that would have pretty much quit life after a day half that "bad".

Having Stuff =/= An Accomplishment.

Congratulations, on your NEW CAR!

A shiny new car, with leather interior, heated seats, nagivation system with a DVD player for the kids.

That new car comes with so much more!

• $500+ a month car payment!
• Monthly insurance that covers everything, I mean it is a nice car can you have to be fully covered, what if something were to happen to it?
• The gift of buying new tires!
• Weekly Gas refills!
• Worry that someone will ding it in a parking lot, break into it on the street.
• DVD player so the kinds can be zombified every time you get in the car! Conversation and individual thought = bad. Kids raised by cartoons = good.

Everyone tells you it's a nice car.

But is it really? Want to take a month of work and go to Fiji? Europe? Australia? Don't forget you have to make those car payments, you have to worry about where to park it, it has to be safe. It's too nice to leave parked in a driveway, someone might steal it, oh gosh, someone might steal it, better keep it insured. It's going to depreciated in value while you are gone, gosh that sucks. Someone dinged it, $1000 for a touch up? ugh, but it's a nice car, can't have it all dinged up.


I had a conversation with a friend this morning, they were telling me about their apartment and how amazing it was and how much work they put into buying all the nice stuff for it, the glamorous furniture and that one the people that owns 1/2 the stuff is leaving and it's such a shame. This got me thinking? At what point do you stop owning stuff and does stuff start owning you?

Having stuff is having stuff. No more, no less. It's not an accomplishment. If your stuff is designer and expensive it tells the world that you have to have that type of thing to justify your existence. "Look, I have a nice car, I'm special" is that really the message you want to tell the world?

"I think that people will like me more if I have nice sunglasses/shoes"

Stupidly overpriced items aren't an example of accomplishments, they are an example of pretentiousness.

Assignment

This assignment is for those of us that are in a relationship. It's a two person assignment (for you and your partner). So you may want to print it. I'm going to write this directed toward one person, but both should do this and do it individually.

We are going to need 4 blank pages for this (I hope you have a few pages left)

Title the four pages as follows:

Page 1: ADVENTURES
Page 2: SEX
Page 3: FUN
Page 4 you are going to split in Half (draw a horizontal line) and title the first section: TEACH and the second section LEARN

Now on each page you are going to come up with a minimum number of ideas of items in these topics we can do together in the next year or so. Anything goes they can be as small or as large as you’d like sure, crazy things are permitted.

So here are your categories once again, your minimum number of ideas and a few examples to get you going (feel free to use them to get yourself started) Remember no idea is too big, too small or too crazy.

ADVENTURES - 20 ideas – suggestions for small or large adventures you and your partner can go on.
Ex:

• Go to the mall with a camera in hand, go into different stores and dress up in the craziest outfits possible and take snap shots in the dressing room.
• Attempt to get on the roof of the tallest building in your city.
• Take a road trip for the weekend.

SEX – 15 ideas – ideas for everything and anything for you and your partner to do, try, learn, etc regarding your sex lives.
Ex:

• Go to an Adult store and buy something to spice up the bedroom
• Find and Old Polaroid Camera and Film, shoot some retro style risqué photos
• Make/Buy blindfolds

FUN – 15 ideas – Ideas for everyday fun things you can do.
Ex:

• Attend a free cooking class.
• Paint a canvas together.
• Check out a local stand up comedy event.

Learn – 5 things you want to learn from them
Ex: (I want my partner to teach me)

• A language
• Drive a manual transmission
• etc.

Teach – 5 things you want to teach them
Ex: (things I want to teach my partner how to)

• How do solve a Sudoku Puzzle
• Make a particular food
• etc

You have 3 days for you to each complete this. At first you may find it really hard to come up with ideas, but once you get a few out your brain will kick into gear and you'll be filling up each section. Feel free to fill up the page and exceed the set minimum for ideas. They can range from anything big or small. No idea is a bad idea.

Don’t worry about overlapping ideas, you'll probably overlap on your ideas or even use some of the examples. Once you have this completed sit down and compare your ideas and then go out and start completing them. You will learn more about the person you are with and you'll have a lot of fun in the process.

Who Killed Hemingway...

Video may have killed the radio star and then killed itself (have you seen music videos lately?) But I think that Technology Killed the Hemingway

I stumbled upon this anecdote yesterday:

A young photographer showed his portfolio to an older more experienced photographer. He hoping to gain an insight into his work and how to improve his craft. The older photographer assured him his work was technically good and that he should carry on shooting as he had. Unsatisfied with that response he asked "But how do I make my photos more interesting?" "Live a more interesting life." Replied the seasoned pro.

It's become vastly simple to live a very uninteresting life. I myself am guilty on numerous counts of being boring. Thank god I have other counts of being the opposite, so, as for now, they balance out.

As a society we have ease of access to food, water, shelter, we have 24 hour a day entertainment, music, movies, videos all at our finger tips. What have all these treasures made us? Boring and lazy.

We have no great struggles, men no longer have to prove they are men in the fields (yes, in the rest of the world they do, but I'm talking about the city dwelling, blog reading, Starbucks drinking part of our population). Most of us go to work, come home, watch tv, read blogs, look at people's facebook photos, have a drink and go to bed. The next day we get up and do the same thing again and again. This passes on for days, then weeks and finally years. We are boring. So we have nothing interesting to write about, nothing interesting to sing about, no interesting plays to write, no great stories to tell or images to capture. We have monotony.

I continued to think about this little anecdote for the rest of the afternoon as I worked away. I thought about great artists of our time, for example:

Ernest Hemingway:
On his route to the Italian front, he stopped in Paris, which was under constant bombardment from German artillery. Instead of staying in the relative safety of the Hotel Florida, Hemingway tried to get as close to combat as possible.

Soon after arriving on the Italian Front Hemingway witnessed the brutalities of war. On his first day on duty an ammunition factory near Milan blew up. Hemingway had to pick up the human—primarily female—remains.

Hemingway wrote about this experience in his short story "A Natural History of the Dead". This first encounter with death left him shaken.

The soldiers he met later did not lighten the horror. One of them, Eric Dorman-Smith, entertained Hemingway with a line from Part Two of Shakespeare's Henry IV, Act III, Scene II: "By my troth, I care not; a man can die but once; we owe God a death...and let it go which way it will, he that dies this year is quit for the next."[4]The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber", one of his famous short stories set in Africa.)

To another soldier, Hemingway once said, "You are troppo vecchio (It. too old) for this war, pop." The 50-year old soldier replied, "I can die as well as any man (Hemingway, for his part, would quote this line in "

From here the man went on to be involved in several more wars, became a friend of Castro, travelled through Africa. Won a Nobel prize, caught on fire and was in two different plane crashes.

How's that for interesting? Similar great artists have life stories that are full of adventure and conflict. It fuels their creative life. Hemingway's story continues from there full of adventure, travel and writing.

Want to be a great artist? Writer? Poet? Painter? Photographer? Designer? heck, even a great person? Then fill your life with interesting people, places, experiences. Get off of your couch. Cancel your cable, cut down on wasting time. Before you do something that could be considered frivolous ask yourself

Will this add to my life? Will I become a more interesting person? What will this experience add to my life?

Who knows, maybe you are a great writer and just need something to write about.

oh and ps. actually a shotgun killed Hemingway.

What some motivation?

Go find it.

You can learn anything...

Neil Strauss from geek to god. Neil decided that he had enough of being a quiet, shy, stay at home individual. Since then he's written numerous best selling books, had a tv show and hangs out with rock stars and celebrities. How? He decided something had to change and then acted on that decision.

What can you learn? Could I teach you Russian? If we sat down for an afternoon would you learn a few words? What if I told you how to jump start a car? Yup, you could learn that too. Hmmm... what else could you learn? Could you learn how to meet new people? shake hands properly? what about learn how to perform well in a job interview? sell a car? ride a bike? make egg rolls? dance?

Here's the magic secret, you can learn how to do anything and then you can learn to do anything better and better and better.

You can learn to be a better friend, better in relationships, better in bed, and overall better in life. Here's the strange part, we learn very little about these things, maybe the friendship stuff we learn in the first 3-8 years of life, we learn about relationships until we are late in our teens, then we have our views intact that will serve us for the rest of our lives.

Most people treat the way they communicate with others, they way they treat their family, their friends, and themselves as if their behaviour was set in stone. I find this both odd and peculiar. When we were young and learning how to interact we learned from people around us, we were impressionable, what we saw shaped us. We can, as adults not only relearn but we can change completely, for the better.

"But I'm happy with who I am, I don't want to change." If you just thought this then please leave this website, you are clearly not of the mindset for this type of learning.

Still reading? Then you must not only be willing to change, but to want to change. It's that desire to change that we can use to fuel you for the rest of your life. Change is something that starts with small things and then gradually grows, building momentum. Change is about taking a belief tearing it down and replacing it with a new belief, let's do that today.

Your first Challenge:

Stop 3 random people today and introduce yourself

"Hi, I'm ________" put your hand out to shake hands, smile and look them in the eyes. Wait and see what happens.

A lot of you are saying "I can't do that" But we have to ask ourselves why does this thought come to mind? Because somewhere in your life you were told that you can't do that, no reason, no rules, no laws, just someone impressed this upon you. Let's void this belief and replace it with a new one.

Complete this challenge and then post up your results in the comments, tell us how it felt, what they did and what your beliefs were and now are. Do you still believe that you can't just introduce yourself to a random stranger?

Less is More

In the book "The Four Hour Work Week" - Tim Ferriss introduces the reader to the 80/20 rule also known at the Pareto principle. It is wildly applicable to many things and through-out the book Tim references it in various aspects.

As part of my transformation I'm trying to apply the 80/20 rule to my life. I know, by this point you are asking WTF is the 80/20 rule... Here are some applications:

Basic principle - 80% of your results come from 20% of your efforts

• Business - 80% of your income comes from 20% of your clients.
  
• Work - 80% of your work is completed by 20% of your tasks. If you look at your daily work, most of your results don't come from emailing back and forth, checking websites, reading reports etc. While these pointless pursuits occupy 80% of your day they serve to do nothing else.
  
• You wear 20% of your clothes 80% of the time and furthermore you only use about 20% of the things you own.
  

I'm not Tim Ferriss so I can't get you started on the first two as well as the other examples he gives. If you'd like to eliminate 80% of your workload while maintaining your effectiveness, then I suggest picking up his book "The Four Hour Work Week".

What I'm going to touch on today is eliminating 80% of your life. We are owned by what we own. Ever find that your friends that have really nice cars worry about their cars? People that wear really expensive clothes worry about their clothes? I've never seen someone spill red wine on a Walmart shirt and freak out. Why? cause they don't care. It's a $12 shirt, they'll replace it. So let's get started shall we?

1. Purge your office clean. Start with your office. Look around, anything you haven't used in a few months. Get rid off. Throw out anything that isn't of value to anyone, give away the rest. Put it in a box, label "free" on it and stick it somewhere of high visibility. Let the people that don't know any better pick it up, collect it and have it occupy space in their life.
   
   
2. Let's clean out your closet. ANYTHING you haven't worn in the last year. GONE. That suit you had when you were a size 40 waist? Gone. Old shirts? shoes? jeans? shorts? socks? gone. You really only wear 20% of your entire wardrobe. So lets get rid of the rest. Things to save: specific pieces for things like mountain climbing, outdoor adventure, costumes, tuxedos (that fit), suits and the like. You might not have worn these lately but when you are more awesome you'll need them again. I did this several weeks ago and I eliminated about 60% of volume from my closet and I plan on doing this again in a few months. I find myself buying 2 pairs of jeans and cycling them till they are worn. When they are I toss out my oldest pair. At any given time I have 3-4 pairs of jeans and one of those are designated for cleaning/painting/mechanics etc. Let's take this pile of clothes that we no longer want to the Salvation Army. This is win win, you are free and clear of more things you don't want or use and you'll feel good about giving to people that have next to nothing.
   
   
3. The rest of the house. Now here comes the fun, you'll probably need a day for this and some good albums to get you through it. Anything you haven't used in one year. GET RID OF IT. Ok, maybe that's a bit much, you might need some wrenches and screw drivers etc. Keep those and anything that is there for an emergency, for repairs, etc. That jar of pens? gone. Stacks of papers? magazines? Let's be honest you are not going to need to reference that shit. One, because it's dated. Two, because you have the internet you can find this information in less time that it would take to find the magazine/paper .. This goes for school text books, annual reports and any other shit. Gone, gone and gone. Now we are really building momentum. Feels good doesn't it?
   
   
4. CD's, DVD's and the like. Remember your stack of audio cassettes? the ones that you hung on to as CD's phased in? Remember when you threw them out? The "let's get rid of this junk" feelings you had. Well, CD's and DVD's are being phased out. Sure you really like the cases or some stupid reason that you are justifying keeping them. "It's a good movie" unless that's the archival copy you are holding on to for the Weinstein Brothers, then get rid of it. It's time to load up the CD's. First we are ripping them to your hard drive because you don't listen to CD's anymore. They are dying, actually they are dead. So now you have copies of the music you paid to license, nothing illegal here. Now throw them out (give them away, I don't care). DVD's? When was the last time you took a movie out of your DVD collection and watched it? If you really want a movie you can download it, so lets pack these up and take them to Blockbuster where they will give you store credit for them. Now you can buy something with that credit (I think they have mp3 players, and other stuff that are not DVD related items). I know that less is more, but you paid hundreds if not thousands for the DVD collection and I want you to feel like you are getting something for it.
   
   
5. Look around, it feels good. We just cut out about 50% of the shit we don't want. It feels good doesn't it? All of a sudden we have less to worry about. We don't have to worry about something happening to something we don't care about, as well as we have more space. Wait we have more space! More space for more stuff right? Not exactly. Ever notice that you feel really free when you are somewhere that is empty and open?
   Think of a big field or a spacious room with minimal furniture, how does that make you feel, now look at your new zen like space. FREEDOM!
   

I encourage you to continue to do this, to purge your life clean of useless items. You will feel less owned by the items you have and you'll find yourself saving money. What? Really? Saving money by throwing out/giving away stuff? Yes, you'll find yourself in this new Zen like state, well maybe not all of us, but you'll find that you want less cause you realize that you'll probably just end up getting rid of it sooner or later.

Would you rather work here:

Or here:

Step 1

Step one
"BE MORE AWESOME"

Step two
"REPEAT DAILY"




***Warning, I enjoy the term awesome, it's horribly awesome, and you will read that word more than Pauly Shore during a script reading, laugh at it, hate it, I don't care. Awesome? Awesome!***

My day was awesome because I was featured on a local news program and the host told me several times after the taping that the segment was awesome and she really thought there was something great about our interview.

Awesome because I was on contract with a major company and my results from that contract can lead to long term job related success. I did what I needed to do and I plan on presenting my results in the absolute best way possible.

Bragging? Not really, I like to think of it more as conditioning, yes Pavolov, I said conditioning. I didn't tell myself that I was awesome in the segment, the host did. I didn't think how awesome I was doing the job I thought about how awesome the results, if everything was executed properly could be. I'm just reinforcing my beliefs, associating pleasure with the behaviour of being awesome.

I believe that we, as humans (I'm assuming you are a human, if you are not please do not leave spam in my comments section, I don't need granny porn, penis enlargement pills or cheap medication but thanks for stopping by.) are motivated by two things: Pleasure Seeking, Pain Avoidance. We do something because we want to seek the pleasure of doing it (sex, making money, winning the Super Bowl) or we do something to avoid pain (wearing warm clothes in the winter, pay bills, get out of the way of on coming traffic).

If you associate pleasure with working out, feeling good and looking good then you will be more prone to workout than if you associate pain with not working out. Don't believe me? Think of the times you mow down on some oh so tasty unhealthy fast food, mmmmm.... soooo good, pure pleasure. Then what happens? You feel like ass, your guts hurt and bring on the pain. "I'm never doing this again, no more baconators for me!" A few weeks later the Baconator shows up on your lunch tray, mmmmm..... bacony goodness. Final score? Pleasure 2, Pain 0.
So my first goal is to establish pleasure with everything. Eliminate pain? nope not at all, I don't think that this is even possible. I simply readjust my view. How can I turn PAIN into PLEASURE? It's all about perspective. So if I can condition myself to look at the pleasure of not eating a cheeseburger - feeling better, feeling I made a smart choice, I'll look better, I'll be healthier. All of a sudden that decision is easier. Final score? Pleasure 2, Pain 0 but this time pleasure comes in the form of a chicken breast and some veggies.

It seems that Pleasure seeking makes us feel great, Pain avoidance sucks our energy, it requires effort and the reward is not as good.

Would you rather comment on this blog post if you got a $5 reward or because if you don't I will punch you?

More Awesome.

In January of 2009 I looked back at the past year and realized that I could have had more "awesome" in it. What is "more awesome"? Well it's a term that we came up with a few years ago relating to enhancing our lives. All aspects. Money, Grooming, Fitness, Work, Relationships and the like.